Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Chemistry Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Chemistry

Strong Temporal Variability In Methane Fluxes From Natural Gas Well Pad Soils, Seth N. Lyman, Huy N. Q. Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Ric Bowers, Ann Smith May 2020

Strong Temporal Variability In Methane Fluxes From Natural Gas Well Pad Soils, Seth N. Lyman, Huy N. Q. Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Ric Bowers, Ann Smith

Bingham Research Center

We measured methane and carbon dioxide fluxes at natural gas well pad soils and undisturbed soils in the Rocky Mountain and Gulf Coast regions of the United States, including producing and gas storage wells. We collected both short-term (15 min) and multi-day (between 3 and 8), continuous measurements at 47 well pads and two undisturbed locations. Methane fluxes varied by more than an order of magnitude over periods as short as 30 min (e.g., 19–593 mg m−2 h−1 in one instance), and diurnal and seasonal variability was also significant (e.g., spring-to-fall change from 509 to 14174 mg m …


Aerial And Ground-Based Optical Gas Imaging Survey Of Uinta Basin Oil And Gas Wells, Seth N. Lyman, Trang Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Arvind P. Ravikumar Nov 2019

Aerial And Ground-Based Optical Gas Imaging Survey Of Uinta Basin Oil And Gas Wells, Seth N. Lyman, Trang Tran, Marc L. Mansfield, Arvind P. Ravikumar

Bingham Research Center

We deployed a helicopter with an infrared optical gas imaging camera to detect hydrocarbon emissions from 3,428 oil and gas facilities (including 3,225 producing oil and gas well pads) in Utah’s Uinta Basin during winter and spring 2018. We also surveyed 419 of the same well pads from the ground. Winter conditions led to poor contrast between emission plumes and the ground, leading to a detection limit for the aerial survey that was between two and six times worse than a previous summertime survey. Because the ground survey was able to use the camera’s high-sensitivity mode, the rate of detected …